on her knees, crawling up the aisle over the grass floor and sobbing hoarsely. And the evangelist leaned still farther forward and said soothingly to her—to black Becky—"Ay, sister, ay, sister!"
Holy smoke! Yet Paul couldn't laugh—he felt too tight.
Suddenly his attention leapt as though it had been lashed with a whip. For the man was pointing straight at him. "You there, you and you and you! How much longer do you reckon you can go on concealing your shame—eh? What would your feelings be if you found out that somebody had been watching you all those times you thought nobody was looking? Ay, my poor friends, you'd blush and stammer if you thought your neighbours could see all the meanness in your heart. But in the darkest hours, behind the locked door, in the most unlikely places, where nobody is looking, God can see. He has seen—think back, he saw you; he's got it down in a book; what excuse will you make on the Day of Judgment when he confronts you with the record? What will your blushing and stammering avail you then? You may go on hoodwinking yourself and your neighbours, but you can't hoodwink the Almighty. You can't flee the wrath to come—not by a long sight! The flames of hell are never damped. They're hungry for fuel. What kind of a fix will you and you and you and you be in if God reaches down His hand this very night and smites you?"
Paul was not trying to guess the answer; he was merely swallowed up in the terror of his own shortcomings. He was mesmerised by this horrid man who fingered the secrets of one's soul. His throat was dry and his heart bumped. People were moaning and pushing their way towards the front; he felt that in a moment he would be drawn there himself; desperately he was trying to remember some reason why he shouldn't follow, why he
